4 March 2003, Rome -- The
world's population will be better fed by 2030, but hundreds
of millions of people in developing countries will remain
chronically hungry.

This is one of the key
messages of World agriculture: towards
2015/2030, FAO's latest global assessment of the
long-term outlook for food and agriculture. It updates and
extends the last FAO assessement made in 1995.

The projections, covering 140 countries and 32 crop
and livestock commodities, analyse supply and demand for the
major agricultural commodities and sectors, including fisheries
and forestry.

"By the year
2015/2030 per capita food supplies will have increased and the
incidence of undernourishment will have been further reduced in
most developing regions", writes FAO Director-General
Dr Jacques Diouf in his foreword.

However,
parts of South Asia may be still in a difficult position and
much of sub-Saharan Africa will probably not be significantly
better off than at present in the absence of concerted action by
all concerned.

"Therefore the
world must brace itself for continuing interventions to cope
with the consequences of local food crises and for action to
remove permanently their root causes," according to Dr
Diouf.

World Food Summit target
will be missed

The study says
that the number of hungry people is expected to decline from
around 800 million today to about 440 million in 2030. This
means, that the target of the World Food Summit in 1996, to
reduce the number of hungry by half by 2015, will not even be
met by 2030.

"The report aims at
describing the future as it is likely to be," said
Jelle Bruinsma, the editor of the FAO report. "It does
not describe the future as it ought to be nor does it provide a
development strategy for global agriculture."

"The study draws to the maximum
extent possible on the knowledge of various disciplines in
FAO's technical divisions. It represents FAO's
perspective on the future of food, nutrition and
agriculture," Bruinsma said.

"We hope that governments and the
international community use the report as a basis for their
actions, to cope with both existing problems and with new ones
that may emerge."

In particular,
the study examines:

the prospects
of food and nutrition;

commodities and
international agricultural trade;

the
implications of agricultural production on the
environment;

livestock production, forestry
and fisheries;

agriculture and poverty
alleviation;

globalization in
food and agriculture;

agricultural
technology;

climate change and
agriculture.

The study is
currently available only in English. A summary report, released
in August 2002, was published in English, French and Spanish.